Horizontal Hold: The Making and Breaking of a Network Television Pilot

The author of The Imperfect Mirror: Reflections of Television Newswomen has already made it clear that he doesn't think much of network TV fare, and this devastating chronicle of an aborted series offers ample justification for his attitude. Paisner details the genesis of a pilot episode about a group of presidential speechwriters who work near the White House, a concept that evidently sounded better to originator Bruce Paltrow (fresh from his triumph with St. Elsewhere ) and his co-workers than it does to the reader. Filmed in New York City, then retitled and reshot in Los Angeles with a new cast, the pilot failed to win the bankers' approval in either version. But the story of its death--with producers hyping themselves, the networks demanding tried-and-true situations, the creators proudly pointing to their use of a ``real'' laugh track (a reorganized tape of actual studio audience response)--makes for an impressive revelation of contemporary cloud-cuckoo-landspelling and punctuation per Webster's . (Oct.)